Why Flappy Bird Was So Addictive

Flappy Bird, a mobile game designed by an obscure independent game developer from Vietnam named Dong Nguyen, has been available through Apple and Android's app stores since last May, but it's only been in the past couple weeks that it's achieved the kind of virality that makes a game a popular sensation on the level of, say, Angry Birds or Candy Crush. Since then, though, it's been an inescapable online presence, the subject of a vast number of deeply impassioned tweets and a whole bunch of reviews that frequently express bafflement over the fact that it's been downloaded over 50 million times.

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The thing about Flappy Bird is that it's not a fun game, at least according to the generally accepted definition of "fun." In it, you control the altitude of an 8-bit bird as it moves through a constantly side-scrolling maze of Super Mario Bros.-like pipes with small gaps between them that you're supposed to maneuver through. The premise (tap the screen to give the bird a bump of lift and then it glides downward as it moves across the screen) is simple, but the touchy controls, merciless gravity mechanics, and the fact that even getting close to a pipe is enough to end the single life you have per round have made it one of the most unforgiving and frustrating gaming experiences ever designed. Each game lasts only seconds, and simply scoring into the double digits is considered a sign of mastery.

The reason a game like Angry Birds works is that it provides players with some sort of interesting new kind of pleasure, like the strange satisfaction of knocking down a tower of pig-filled stone blocks with a catapult. Flappy Bird, on the other hand, seems like it was designed explicitly to deny players that kind of gratification, and to instead dish out a ceaseless torrent of disappointment and defeat.

Some of the more baffled of Flappy Bird's reviewers seem to think this is an effect of bad design, that Nguyen meant it to be a traditionally rewarding game but was too clumsy a developer to accomplish that goal, and that its subsequent mass popularity is some kind of fluke. Actually, it seems more likely that it was specifically designed to be impossible, and is so well-designed that it makes non-stop failure somehow its own kind of pleasure.

To a mainstream audience, this kind of masochistic relationship with a video game is a novel sensation, but hardcore gamers have known it for years. From viciously difficult arcade titles like Ghosts 'n Goblins to the merciless subgenre of so-called "bullet hells" to modern titles like Dark Souls that use immense difficulty as a selling point, gaming has always had a mean streak and a willing audience for it, but now it's finally started to catch on big time.

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Flappy Bird has a relentlessly habit-forming quality that's hard to explain. Most times you play, you just gracelessly pilot your bird into the first set of pipes, ending the game almost before it starts, and this remains the case even if you've played it dozens of times in a row. But for some reason an apparently sizeable subset of the population will keep returning for more, repeatedly failing again and again with no suggestion of victory in sight. The compulsion the game breeds feels weirdly unwholesome, like fostering an addiction to huffing spray paint or something else equally unglamorous. But for some reason that doesn't stop us from going back for another hit, or two, or twelve.

There's got to be a psychological explanation for Flappy Bird's massive success. It would be easy to draw a parallel between repeatedly flinging yourself (or at least a pixelated avian avatar of yourself) against a set of pipes and the frustration of day-to-day existence, and learning to let frustration over your inevitable failure fade into acceptance can be incredibly meditative. Then again, for some people, it seems to bring out a submissive side that they maybe aren't prepared to deal with. That might explain why there's been such a vocal negative response to the game, and why Nguyen pulled it from app stores yesterday. Maybe the world just wasn't ready for Flappy Bird.

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